Malaysian Prime Minister: “Anti-Semitism” is Term Invented to Prevent Criticism of Jews

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said in an interview Monday that “Antisemitic is a term that is invented to prevent people from criticizing the Jews for doing wrong things,” as he dismissed anti-Jewish hatred as an artificial construct to stifle debate, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.

“There is one race that cannot be criticized. If you are antisemitic, it seems almost as if you are a criminal,” Mohamad, an avowed anti-Semite, told the Associated Press. “When somebody does wrong, I don’t care how big they are. They may be powerful countries but if they do something wrong, I exercise my right of free speech. They criticize me, why can’t I criticize them?”

(The term anti-Semitism was coined by the 19th century German journalist Wilhelm Marr, who opposed Jewish emancipation and sought to popularize a term that would make Jew-hatred sound more scientific.)

Mohamad was elected into office in May and has since been in the spotlight for his anti-Semitic rhetoric based on a decades-long record of incitement against the Jewish people. On his personal blog, he entertained anti-Semitic conspiracies, such as the Jewish plot for world domination. “Jews rule this world by proxy,” Mohamad wrote in 2012.

At 92, he is the world’s oldest elected leader. He previously served as prime minister from 1981 until 1999.

In his 2003 address to the Organization of the Islamic Conference summit in Kuala Lumpur, Mohamad vowed that “1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counterattack.”

“We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million,” Mohamad said in an apparent attempt to incite a second Holocaust.

He has also said he was proud to be an anti-Semite. “I am glad to be labeled antisemitic […] How can I be otherwise, when the Jews who so often talk of the horrors they suffered during the Holocaust show the same Nazi cruelty and hard-heartedness towards not just their enemies but even towards their allies should any try to stop the senseless killing of their Palestinian enemies.”

In his book, “The Makay Dilemma,” published in 1970, Mohamad stated that “The Jews are not merely hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively.”

[Photo: U.S. Department of State / WikiCommons ]

Norway's Favorite Anti-Semitic Cartoonist Strikes Again

Bruce Bawer

A visitor examines a box car, used by the Nazis to transport Jews to death camps, on display at the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg Fla., on Jan. 27, 2017. (Scott Keeler/Tampa Bay Times via AP)

After the publication of a dozen Muhammed cartoons in the September 30, 2005, issue of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten led to mass Muslim mayhem, the story of the cartoons went worldwide – but the cartoons didn't. Well, yes, you could find them online. But very few of the newspapers, newsmagazines, and TV news programs that reported on them actually showed them. They were too scared. One brave exception was Vebjørn Selbekk, then editor of Magazinet, a tiny Norwegian newspaper. In its January 9, 2006, issue, he reprinted the cartoons as part of a feature examining their impact. The feature included an interview with Norway's most famous editorial cartoonist, Finn Graff, who has been plying his trade at various newspapers – most recently Dagbladet – since 1960. Asked if he would ever draw anything that might offend Muslims, Graff said no. He admitted that he feared the possible repercussions, but also insisted that his decision was based “as much on respect for [Muslims'] religious belief as on real fear.” In other words, as I wrote in my 2009 book Surrender, “he supposedly respected beliefs that he knew might drive people to kill him.”

For reprinting the Danish cartoons, the courageous Selbekk ended up being savaged by pretty much the entire Norwegian cultural establishment and pressured to apologize by people at the highest levels of the Norwegian government. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (now head of NATO) declared that, yes, Norway had free-speech rights, but that those rights came with responsibilities, which Selbekk had ignored; Stoltenberg also insisted that no major Norwegian newspaper had reprinted the cartoons. (On the contrary, Aftenposten had done so, and Dagbladet had run them on its website, but in the effort to single out Selbekk for demonization these inconvenient facts were dropped down the memory hole.) On February 10, 2006, Selbekk capitulated and, in the presence of government ministers and reporters, formally expressed his contrition to fourteen imams representing forty-six Norwegian Muslim organizations. It was a disgraceful day for Norwegian liberty.

Meanwhile Graff stuck to his promise. He is still at work, and will turn eighty this Christmas, and he has never drawn a cartoon that might offend Muslims. He has, however, continued to churn out cartoons that depict another group in the most negative imaginable way. That group? Jews. Over the years, his drawings have repeatedly equated Jews with Nazis and Israel with Hitler's Germany. On April 3, 2001, for example, Dagbladet ran a cartoon that alluded to a famous photograph of Jews being rounded up in the Warsaw ghetto; in Graff's rendering, the helpless victims were not Jews but Palestinians, notably Yasir Arafat, and the genocidal monsters were not Nazis but Israelis, as represented by a single huge-nosed soldier (an image of the Jew that would not have been out of place in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer).

There were several more such cartoons in the years that followed. The one that ran in Dagbladet on July 10, 2006, drew harsher criticism than usual. Drawn in response to civilian deaths in Gaza, it depicted Ehud Olmert, Israel's then prime minister, as Amon Göth, the Nazi concentration-camp commander who, in the film Schindler's List, is depicted as shooting at Jewish prisoners just for the fun of it. After the cartoon was published, Israel's ambassador to Norway, Miryam Shomrat, filed a formal complaint with Pressens Faglige Utvalg, Norway's press ethics commission. PFU dismissed her complaint on the grounds that the Norwegian press has a high tolerance for controversial editorial cartoons – an absurd claim that came only five months after the Norwegian state had put Selbekk through his humilation ritual.

Since then, Graff has kept these repulsive things coming. Has his chronic Jew-bashing harmed his reputation? Au contraire. Far from ever being disciplined, suspended, or fired, he's been showered with awards. In 2006 he won a prize from Norway's Ethical Humanist Society. The next year, King Harald V presented him with the Order of Saint Olav, the closest thing in Norway to a knighthood. Last year, he was given a lifetime-achievement award that is the highest accolade in Norwegian journalism. When he won that one, Geir Ramnefjell, the political editor of Dagbladet, praised him as follows: “Finn spares no one.” Another inconvenient fact dropped down the memory hole.

Last week Graff landed himself in another controversy. It began with an August 7 cartoon in Dagbladet that shows Benjamin Netanyahu sitting on a bench. Written on the bench in English, in a clear reference to Jim Crow, are the words “Whites only.” Netanyahu's arms and legs form the shape of – what else? – a swastika. One hand is curled into a fist, which he has apparently just used to knock a Druze off the bench. Inspired by the recent official declaration that Israel is, indeed, the homeland of the Jews – a declaration that, some critics charge, turns gentiles into second-class citizens – the cartoon, like the one of Olmert in 2006, led to a complaint to the PFU by the Israeli government, which demanded that Dagbladet apologize and remove it from its website. The Simon Wiesenthal Center described the cartoon as an example of “contemptuous Jew-hatred.” The head of Oslo's only synagogue, Ervin Kohn, called the cartoon anti-Semitic. But Dagbladet stood firm, with Ramnefjell pulling out the “satire” defense.

Appearing on August 9 on Dagsnytt atten, a current-affairs TV and radio program, Kohn underscored that he wasn't denying anyone's freedom of expression. He didn't want to see anyone punished. This isn't a legal matter, he emphasized, but a question of decency. Appearing with him was Arne Jensen of the Association of Norwegian Editors, which supported Dagbladet's position. Jensen said he could understand if Jews found the cartoon offensive, but insisted it was not meant as an attack on Jews but as a jab at Netanyahu. Kohn replied that invoking Nazism was not a “jab.” When the host asked Kohn if there was any boundary that cartoonists should respect, Kohn replied forcefully: “The boundary is Nazism!...How hard is that to understand?” This was, he further argued, not a matter of Jews being “offended,” as Muslims claimed to be by the Danish cartoons; this was a matter of Graff trivializing a profound chapter of European history that involved everyone and that should therefore appall everyone. Neither the host nor Jensen, alas, got it. Jensen proceeded to refer to the Holocaust as something that had happened to “you,” i.e. the Jews; Kohn repeated, passionately, that the Shoah is part of the history of everyone in Norway and Europe. But Jensen remained clueless; replying to Kohn, he actually referred to the Holocaust as “historic discomforts” (historiske ubehageligheter).

The program was illuminating, because even though Finn Graff wasn't there in person, he was there in spirit. The exchange provided a vivid reminder that he's far from the only person in Norway who doesn't grasp the colossal inappropriateness of equating anyJew with the Nazis. They all walk on eggshells when the subject is Islam, but Jews and Israel are another story. Of course it's all about cowardice. In Graff's case, to be sure, it may be about something more. For as it happens – and this is something I first learned the other day from his Wikipedia page – Graff is only half Norwegian. He was born in Germany in 1938, the son of a Norwegian mother and a German father – a Luftwaffe pilot who died when his plane was shot down in the war. In 1946, Graff's mother brought her son to Norway. Is it possible – or, should I say, isn't it likely – that this background helps explain Graff's manifest hatred for Jews, his obsession with Nazi imagery, and his readiness to equate the Holocaust's victims with its perpetrators? In any event, why does this sensational family history never come up when one of Graff's anti-Semitic cartoons creates a blowback? Could it be that the same Norwegian cultural and media elite that blithely rejects any duty to be sensitive about Norway's past treatment of Jews feels curiously obliged to show sensitivity about the Nazi family history of an honored friend and colleague?

Urge Congress to Keep the Iraqi Jewish Archives Safe!

Write to your Senators today!

What you need to know: 

• In 1948, the personal and communal possessions of thousands of Iraqi Jewish citizens were seized as the Jews were persecuted and then expelled by the Iraqi government in reaction to the formation of the Jewish State of Israel. They were forced to give up their citizenship, belongings, and to flee their homes. 
• However, years later, when the heroic United States Army was stationed in Iraq in 2003, they discovered an archive of effects of Jewish Iraqi heritage, a signal that the exiled people may possibly be united with a fraction of what had been stolen from them. The archival effects had been left decomposing, uncared for, neglected and destroyed. 
• After an agreement in 2003 between the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority and the United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the US State Department took the archive into custody and the NARA set to work to restore the collection of effects.

The archives, after much devoted and skillful attention, were greatly improved, proof of what was the dynamic and living Jewish culture that had existed in Iraq in the past.

• While the Iraqi government, as per the agreement, has demanded back the effects, and has indicated that the archive will be exhibited in Iraq, realistically, the possibility of Iraqi Jews ever being allowed to return to see it is slim, if nonexistent.

S. Res. 577 is a resolution that strongly recommends that the US renegotiate the return of the Iraqi Jewish archives to Iraq. 

We believe that since the Iraqi regime confiscated these artifacts, and mistreated and desecrated them, which led to their almost complete deterioration, it is hard to believe that the property of the Iraqi Jewish community would be properly preserved. The Iraqi Jewish community in the US is the constituency of the archive, and is now represented by the Diaspora outside Iraq. 

US taxpayers invested $3 million to restore the Iraqi Jewish archive and NARA has worked diligently to preserve it. 

We strongly urge that the State Department renegotiate with Iraq the current agreement. We believe this archive should be housed in a location that is accessible to scholars, and to Iraqi Jews and their descendants. It is important that the US reaffirm its commitment justice for victims of ethnic and religious persecution, and the restoration of their stolen property.

Send a letter today! 

Indonesia Bans Israeli Athletes from Asian Games, but Names Israel’s Moovit the Official Transit App

An Israeli startup’s mobile guide has been chosen as the official mobility app for the Asian Games in Indonesia to help millions of fans get to sports competitions at the event from which Israel has been banned since 1981, highlighting the ambiguity at the heart of the boycott movement against the Jewish State.

Israel competed at the Asian Games five times, from 1954 to 1974. In 1981 the Asian Games Federation was organized as the Olympic Council of Asia and for political reasons Israel was excluded, and a year later banned permanently. Palestinian athletes, however, remain on the roster, The Times of Israel reported Monday.

The Asian Games, held every four years, are hailed as the second-largest multi-sport event after the Olympics. Teams for 44 countries compete in the tournament, which attracts 3 million visitors from all over the world.

During the Asian Games, also known as Asiad, which will take place August 18 – September 2 in Jakarta and Palembang, Moovit will send out notifications of all transit updates and changes. The app provides real-time transit arrivals and directions, as well as trip plans, service alerts and Get Off Alerts.

“Moovit has the most complete, up-to-date coverage of all modes of transit and lines in Jakarta & Palembang than any other provider,” the company said in a statement. Moovit previously helped organize major sport events, including the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and the UEFA EURO 2016.

The crowdsourced public transportation app, created by an Israeli startup of the same name, has become the world’s most downloaded transit app, and has more than 200 million users in over 2,500 cities in 82 countries.

The startup was set up by Nir Erez in Tel Aviv in February 2012 together with Roy Bick and Yaron Evron. The company has raised $131.5 million to date from investors including Intel Capital and Sequoia Capital.

[Photo: YouTube/ Moovit APP]

Former Israeli National Security Advisor: War with Hezbollah will be “Very Nasty”

The next war between Israel and Hezbollah will be “very nasty” because the Iranian-backed terrorist group stores its weapons in residential neighborhoods, a former Israeli National Security Advisor told Armin Rosen in an interview published in Tablet on Sunday.

“Think of about 120,000 rockets and missiles, 50 percent or 80 percent of them stored by the Iranians within populated areas in private houses. Areas will be evaporated,” Maj. Gen. (res) Yaacov Amidror, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s advisor from 2011 to 2013, explained.

“Think about a missile of half a ton, with all the fuel in it, and Israel hits it with only 100 grams of TNT. … Think about what will be damaged just by the stored missiles. Thousands and thousands of Lebanese will be killed and part of Lebanon will be destroyed.”

Israel will be forced to strike Hezbollah’s missiles on the ground because, as good as Israel’s missile defenses are, Hezbollah has an arsenal of “thousands and thousands” of precision guided missiles aimed at all Israeli population centers. If Hezbollah were to engage in a war with Israel, Amidror said, “Israelis will be killed, no question.”

Once when former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon visited Israel, Amidror recalled that he asked the diplomat, “These missiles will be launched into Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Afula, everywhere. What is your advice to Israel? And I’m telling you if we will hit these missiles, many Lebanese will be killed. Many of them even don’t know that they are neighboring a missile and are totally innocent. You are the secretary-general of the United Nations. What is your advice?”

Ban had no answer.

Amidror believes that there is a “very-high-probability” of another war between Israel and Hezbollah, but that such a conflict is not necessarily inevitable. If the conflict does occur, Amidror assessed that Israel’s aim would be to neutralize Hezbollah’s military capabilities.

The retired general’s assessment of a conflict with Hezbollah was part of a wide-ranging discussion of the challenges Israel is facing in the near future. Amidror characterized Israel as facing one and a half major threats. The half a threat was from Hezbollah. The whole threat is from Hezbollah’s patron, Iran.

Regarding Iran, Amidror is confident that Israel is capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities if necessary. Without giving details, Amidror said, “We know how to do the job in spite of the positions of the S-300,” a Russian anti-aircraft missile system. He said that Israel would attack, if it was the “last day” – but that day has not arrived.

Overall, Amidror’s philosophy is that “peace—or calm, at least—came as a result of Israeli muscle,” Rosen observed. This isn’t just important in terms of deterring its own enemies, but also because Israel has “proved to its former enemies in the Sunni Arab world that it’s powerful enough to fill the vacuum left by America’s exit from the region and to stand up to Iran on the rest of the Middle East’s behalf.”

Israel’s current strategic position in the Middle East leaves Amidror, “very optimistic.”

[Photo: ali javid / YouTube ]

Israel protests to Romania after tourists beaten by police

• Associated Press

• 4h 
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BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Israel's embassy on Monday protested to the Romanian government after four Israeli tourists were allegedly dragged out of a taxi and beaten by riot police in Bucharest during a violent anti-corruption protest.

The embassy described the Friday night attack as "unacceptable and extremely serious."

It said the tourists were returning to their hotel in the Romanian capital of Bucharest when police stopped them.

"They were dragged out of the car, even though they showed their passports and explained they had nothing" to do with the protest, the embassy said, adding that the men would file a criminal complaint.

Police in Bucharest did not immediately react to the statement.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, however, said that "the brutal repression of demonstrators is totally unacceptable."

"In a European state, attacking innocent people, attacking journalists, attacking women and children is inconceivable," he said Monday, calling for a thorough investigation into police brutality during the anti-government protest.

Some 500 people needed medical treatment after police fired tear gas and water cannons to break up the protest against government corruption. Some people lobbed rocks and bottles at police.

Israel to build new towns for Bedouins, the disabled

A view of residential neighborhoods in the southern Israeli town of Arad, located in the Negev Desert. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Israeli government has approved the construction of several new towns in the Negev and Galilee geared to serve the Bedouin and disabled populations.

The Housing Cabinet approved the Shibolet and Daniel communities on Monday, Globes reported. Twenty percent of the units  are slated to be sold to people who are disabled.

Shibolet, in the southern Galilee, will have a total of 350 units. Another 500 units will be built near Ofakim in the south.

Meanwhile, the establishment of Ir Ovot, which will be built in the Arava region of the Negev, comes as part of the government’s effort to resettle the Bedouin minority in permanent housing.

Last year the government began legalizing many Bedouin homes in the Negev, but the Bedouins have been wary because their ownership was not being recognized. Many Bedouin communities lack basic infrastructure.

The issue of housing became a point of contention with the recent passing of Israel’s controversial nation-state bill, which says  the “state views Jewish settlement as a national value and will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.” Critics have alleged that the new law promotes housing discrimination.

Jewish Labour MP wants apology from Jeremy Corbyn over 'Munich Massacre terrorists' memorial

A Labour MP has demanded an apology from Jeremy Corbyn after the Labour leader admitted he was “present” at a memorial for Palestinian terrorists thought to be behind the Munich Massacre.

Jeremy Corbyn appears to have changed his story about the 2014 Tunisia visit

Credit: 

PA Images

Jewish MP Luciana Berger said his “presence alone” as wreaths were laid in a Tunisian cemetery demonstrated his “association and support”.

The Labour leader today said he was present as wreaths were laid on the graves of those thought to be part of the Black September organisation which killed 11 Israeli athletes in 1972.

WATCH: Jeremy Corbyn admits he was present at wreath laying for 'Munich Massacre terrorists'

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Labour denies Jeremy Corbyn honoured 'Munich Massacre terrorists' amid fresh claims

But he said he did not “think” he was involved in the wreath-laying and insisted he was there to see “a fitting memorial to everyone who died in every terrorist incident everywhere”.

Labour has insisted the party boss did not honour the alleged terror leaders but was instead at a service for 47 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike in 1985.

But the Daily Mail published pictures it said showed Mr Corbyn standing 15 yards away from the monument to the air strike victims and in front of the graves of the alleged Black September members.

The attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics saw 11 Israeli athletes murdered by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation splinter group.

A nearby plaque is said to honour Salah Khalaf, accused of being the founder of Black September, his aide Fakhri al-Omari, and PLO chief of security Hayel Abdel-Hamid.

Another grave Mr Corbyn was pictured near to is said to be that of Atef Bseio - also linked to the Munich Massacre and who was killed in Paris in 1992. 

All of them are thought to have been assassinated by the Israeli secret service Mossad or rival Palestinian factions.

Ms Berger said: “Being ‘present’ is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association & support.

She added: “There can also never be a ‘fitting memorial’ for terrorists. Where is the apology?”


 https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/jeremy-corbyn/news/97574/jewish-labour-mp-wants-apology

Labour friends of Israel director Jennifer Gerber said: "Jeremy Corbyn's latest statement in a further insult to those savagely murdered at Munich and their bereaved relatives.

"He says he was paying respect to victims of terrorism when there is clear photographic evidence of him holding a wreath at the grave of the terrorists themselves.

"Jeremy Corbyn's appalling actions, and Labour's attempted cover up, is another truly shameful day for the party he leads."

'I DON'T THINK I WAS INVOLVED'

A Labour source told PoliticsHome that Mr Corbyn went to the cemetery to commemorate victims of the bombing and insisted the Labour leader did not lay a wreath for anyone else.

The source pressed that Salah Khalaf and Atef Bseio were accused by Israel and the US of being part of Black September but that they had denied it.

And they noted that Khalaf had been the second in command to Yasser Arafat - whose grave Labour former minister Jack Straw visited in 2004.

Breaking his silence on the issue during a visit to the West Midlands today, Mr Corbyn said: “A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who attended the conference to those who were killed in Paris in 1992.

“I was present when it was laid - I don’t think I was actually involved in it.”

He added: “I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere, because we have to end it.

“We cannot pursue peace by a cycle of violence. The only way your pursue peace is through a cycle of dialogue.

How many Jews live in the U.S.? That depends on how you define ‘Jewish.’

About US is a new initiative by The Washington Post to cover issues of identity in the U.S. Sign up for the newsletter.

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Adolf Hitler wanted to eliminate the Jewish people, and his regime murdered 6 million in pursuit of that goal.

Thousands of Jews fled to the United States and Israel during and after the Holocaust, if they could manage to make it to these relative safe havens. Now, more than 80 percent of the world’s Jewish population lives in those two countries, and the American Jewish population has grown substantially in number since the end of World War II.

The Jewish People Policy Institute estimated that the global Jewish population was nearing pre-Holocaust numbers a couple of years ago, in part because of “changing patterns of Jewish identification.” But that finding was challenged because of the study’s broad definition of “Jewish.”

Like most things in Judaism, there’s disagreement. Here’s how two major scholars define Jewishness:

• Steven Cohen, a professor at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem, defines a Jew as “anybody who considers him or herself Jewish with some evidence of having Jewish familial ties or having affirmatively switched their identities by conversion or self-identification.” He says that being Jewish is not a religion but “a culture, an ancestry. Most practice Judaism, some don’t practice it at all and some practice other religions.”

• Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Sergio DellaPergola defines the more narrow “core Jewish population” as those who are Jewish only or Jewish by identity, even if they are not religiously Jewish, as long as they practice no other religions. But he also calculates estimates for a more expansive group: those with Jewish parents, those partially Jewish, those with Jewish backgrounds and those who qualify under the “Law of Return” — any person born to a Jewish mother or converted to Judaism without another Jewish identity.

There’s even more to consider: Do you only count someone based on Jewish law if their mother is Jewish? Do you exclude those who practice Judaism and another religion? What about children in interfaith households? 

As a result, estimates of how many Jews live in the United States vary widely.

In 2013, the Pew Research Center released a study of the U.S. Jewish population and created a tool to estimate the size its size based on various definitions. 

For example, if you define Jews only by those who practice the religion, Pew counted 4.2 million adult Jewish Americans or 1.8 percent of the total U.S. adult population.

The estimated population would grow by 1.2 million if you include people of no religion who consider themselves Jewish in a cultural or secular way and have at least one Jewish parent. There are another 1.3 million children being raised at least partially Jewish and living in households with at least one Jewish adult. Totaling those groups, you reach 6.7 million Jews of all ages in the U.S. in 2013.

That’s more than the population lost in the Holocaust. 

But depending how you define the population and who is making the estimate, you could reach a different conclusion.

In 2016, the American Jewish Population Projectat Brandeis University estimated the U.S. Jewish population at 7.2 million. The American Jewish Year Book estimated 6.9 million. And DellaPergola at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem estimated the core U.S. Jewish population at a lower 5.7 million — but when he included all the other definitions of being Jewish his count of American Jews reached 12 million.

Based on those various calculations, it seems that the U.S. Jewish population has grown in absolute numbers since World War II, but it has not necessarily grown at the same rate as the country overall, according to Alan Cooperman, director of religion research at Pew.

So how does the current population compare with the American Jewish population soon after World War II? Twelve years after the end of the war, when many Jews had immigrated to the United States, the 1957 Current Population Survey (the only time the federal household count ever asked about religion) measured the U.S. Jewish population by religion at about 3.9 million people 14 and older. That’s less than the 4.2 million Jewish American adults by religion that Pew measured in 2013.

America provided a place where Jews could thrive and raise families in the years after World War II, even if it was not always welcoming to Jewish refugees. But it took quite some time — around 70 years — for the American Jewish population to match the number of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.